"When someone drones on about 'solidarity,' all I hear is, 'Get in line.' When there’s no room for dissent from the dissent..."

"...there’s no room for me. Color me an anti-fan of performative politics, particularly if it means I’d be part of the show that features bigots posing as bleeding hearts. Plus, all that earnestness! It brings out my ironic and impish side, inclined to correct typos on signage or foment some kind of peripheral debate. Every time someone at one of those encampments cried out 'Free Palestine' I’d be tempted to yell 'From Hamas!' I’d surely get kicked out of the group that wants to kick other people out.... I realize we live in a country born of protest and my attitude may seem vaguely un-American. Watching the rabble-rousers on HBO’s 'John Adams' during Covid lockdown, my first grumbly thought was, 'Stop whining and pay your taxes!' Reading about the Whiskey Rebellion made me think of drunken MAGA types sloganeering at a Trump rally about the glory of firearms...."

Writes Pamela Paul, in "Confessions of an Anti-Protester" (NYT)(free access link).

I share a lot of those feelings. I feel a sense of heightened individuality when I find myself in a crowd. And, like Paul, I've only participated in one political protest in my entire life, but I do rankle at "drunken MAGA types sloganeering at a Trump rally."

Drinking at a Trump rally? Where does she get that? I see the effort at humor after the mention of the Whiskey Rebellion, but I don't think there's drunkenness at Trump rallies. Maybe attend one and look around. You don't have to protest. You don't even need to support the candidate. Snake through the line and talk to people over the railings.

You may be surprised. They might be real human individuals, like you.

"I walked around this place, paranoid of my fellow legislators, racking my brain trying to think, 'What could I have possibly said or done?'"

Said Jim Carroll, quoted in "Vermont Republican secretly poured water into colleague’s bag over months/Mary Morrissey apologizes after being filmed dumping liquid into backpack of Democratic legislator Jim Carroll" (The Guardian).

Both Carroll and Morrissey represent the city of Bennington.

It's not enough to apologize for doing this. The people who depend on this legislator need an explanation for why she repeatedly did something so bizarre. You can apologize for being out of your mind, but you don't really need to. I feel sorry for Morrissey, but she needs to resign. It's interesting that she made Carroll feel that he was insane. Was Morrissey gaslighting Carroll?

Sunrise — 5:18, 5:20, 5:31.

"Another acquaintance he made in Paris [in 1792] was John Stewart, an eccentric figure known as 'Walking Stewart.'"

"His nickname came from the fact that he had walked halfway round the world, from Madras, through Persia, Arabia, Abyssinia, much of North Africa, and every country in Europe as far as Russia. He refused to take carriages because they were both elitist and cruel to horses. He came to believe that there was an impending 'universal empire of revolutionary police terror' that would 'bestialize the human species and desolate the earth.' The police state would ban his books, so he urged readers to translate them into Latin (a precaution against the supposed decay of the English language) and bury them seven feet underground. Their locations would be passed down orally until the dawn of the age of the Stewartian man made their disinterment possible. Despite these bizarre beliefs, Thomas De Quincey, who wrote a wonderful essay about him, said that his political views ‘seemed to Mr Wordsworth and myself every way worthy of a philosopher.'"

From "Radical Wordsworth: The Poet Who Changed the World" (commission earned). 

Red spotted purple and sandhill cranes.

Yesterday, at noon:

This morning at sunrise:

On the day before the solstice, the group "Just Stop Oil" besmirches Stonehenge.

Just stop oil protestors damage Stonehenge 😭
pic.twitter.com/HSQvfWIdNh

— Stonehenge U.K (@ST0NEHENGE) June 19, 2024

The group stresses its moderation: "The orange cornflour we used will soon wash away with the rain, but the urgent need for effective government action to mitigate the catastrophic consequences of the climate and ecological crisis will not."

I'm told there were a lot of these "Please Remember" billboards along the backroads north of Milwaukee.

Photographed from Meade's truck.

Here's an article about the phenomenon: "Mysterious Trump and Epstein billboards are popping up across Wisconsin" (UpNorth News).

"The support I found on this platform helped me face the toughest days..."

From a TikTok video that begins, "If you're reading these words right now, then I have died."

A view looking out at the crowd — and beautiful Lake Michigan — at the Trump rally in Racine yesterday.

"... he looked like he didn't know where the hell he was, but he didn't know where he was. He's blaming it now on AI, oh yeah, he's saying —he doesn't know what AI is — that's okay. Now, they're saying the media is manipu- — oh, he's saying the media is manipulating...."

Video by Meade, of course. As I said in yesterday's post, with the still photographs, I was not there.

"No, you keen-eyed MAGA sleuths, Biden’s aides didn’t schedule an early debate so that they could replace him after he flails."

"Nor did they engineer Hunter Biden’s conviction just to look virtuous. Democrats, it is not the case that if journalists just stop talking about Biden’s age, many Americans miraculously won’t notice it. Nor are there tea leaves auguring a revolt against Trump at the Republican convention. A respected public intellectual privately promoted that idea to me. And Michelle Obama will not — abracadabra! — be riding to the rescue.... Indulging such illusions is dangerous. Those of us who believe that Trump’s return to the White House would be ruinous must prosaically and persistently make the case for Biden’s superiority, flaws and all. We must plan, plod, slog. No sorcery will save us."

Writes Frank Bruni, in "The Election of Magical Thinking" (NYT).

Is it just dangerous illusion and hope of "sorcery" that has us thinking about ways to replace Biden as the Democratic candidate?! Biden plainly looks and sounds as though he's not capable of performing the job anymore. Trusting him even until January 2025 seems like more of a dangerous game of magical thinking. Bruni has written his column to pooh-pooh those of us who are seriously worried about Biden and to take credit for pretending there's no problem worth talking about. 

But I don't think Bruni is delusional. I think he's bullshitting in print but in his head he's got it figured out. It's too hard to replace Biden* and it seems less likely to work than just crossing your fingers and — la la la — moving along as if nothing is amiss and you are crazy if you think so.** And you know who's really crazy? Donald Trump.

_______________________________

* Word that does not appear in Bruni's column: Kamala.

** There's a word for this: gaslighting.

"An exuberant style of play and an effervescent personality made Mays one of the game’s, and America’s, most charismatic figures..."

"... a name that even people far afield from the baseball world recognized instantly as a national treasure.... Mays propelled himself into the Hall of Fame with thrilling flair, his cap flying off as he chased down a drive or ran the bases. 'He had an open manner, friendly, vivacious, irrepressible,' the baseball writer Leonard Koppett said of the young Mays. 'Whatever his private insecurities, he projected a feeling that playing ball, for its own sake, was the most wonderful thing in the world.'... 'Willie could do everything from the day he joined the Giants,' Leo Durocher, his manager during most of his years at the Polo Grounds, said when Mays was elected to the Hall of Fame.... 'He never had to be taught a thing. The only other player who could do it all was Joe DiMaggio.' But even DiMaggio bowed to Mays. 'Willie Mays is the closest to being perfect I’ve ever seen,' he said."

From "Willie Mays, Baseball’s Electrifying Player of Power and Grace, Is Dead at 93/Mays, the Say Hey Kid, was the game’s exuberant embodiment of the complete player. Some say he was the greatest of them all" (NYT).

Sunrise — 4:51, 5:16, 5:21, 5:33.

Pictures from the Trump rally in Racine, Wisconsin.

Waiting in line... the shirts...

... the people...

I'm not there, but Meade is, with his friend Ray:

Ray says: "Hey Ann, totally happy with the picture being there. If you give your readers the context that I’m very open to learning and meeting and getting the whole picture in detail instead of the soundbite that I get from the news. I want to feel this thing, talk to the people too. That context would be make me feel good about it. I’d like both sides to explore. I sincerely believe that if we sit and talk and listen with an open mind, we will come together. The fact that there’s so much political engagement makes me feel optimistic."

Great sentiments! 

Photos by Meade.

"The Democrats are making up stories that I said Milwaukee is a 'horrible city.' This is false, a complete lie..."

"... just like the Laptop from Hell was a lie, Russia … was a lie, and so much more.... It’s called disinformation, and that’s all they know how to do. I picked Milwaukee, I know it well. It should therefore lead to my winning Wisconsin. But the Dems come out with this fake story, just like all of the others. It never ends. Don’t be duped. Who would say such a thing with that important state in the balance?"

Said Trump, on Truth Social, quoted in "Trump to stage Wisconsin rally days after calling Milwaukee a 'horrible city'/Ticket-only event follows unflattering remark about state’s biggest city that will host Republican national convention" (The Guardian).

He also said this on Fox 6 News, which shows that he said something about Milwaukee: "I think it was very clear what I meant. We’re very concerned with crime. I love Milwaukee. But as you know the crime numbers are terrible, and we have to be very careful. But, I was referring to, also, the election."

Fungus of the Day.

But was there any competition? Yes, there was this mushroom who dreamed he was a sunflower and loved it... But now the dream is over... and the mushroom is awake....

"These are my 2 ravens. They're not actually mine. I'm just taming them...."

These are my two ravens ♥️🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛#animals #birds #rfkjr pic.twitter.com/UNT4596Eeh

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) June 18, 2024

1. Is this a political message in metaphor?

2. Is this just exactly what it is — a man interacting with wildlife that happens to frequent his backyard?

3. The use of "taming" prods us to read the relevant section of "The Little Prince": 

"But it only recently struck me that in this new Cold War, we—and not the Chinese—might be the Soviets."

"It’s a bit like that moment when the British comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb, playing Waffen-SS officers toward the end of World War II, ask the immortal question: 'Are we the baddies?' I imagine two American sailors asking themselves one day—perhaps as their aircraft carrier is sinking beneath their feet somewhere near the Taiwan Strait: Are we the Soviets?...  The self-destruction of homo sovieticus was worse. And yet is not the resemblance to the self-destruction of homo americanus the really striking thing? ... The bloated, dysfunctional bureaucracy, brilliantly parodied by South Park in a recent episode—is great for the nomenklatura, lousy for the proles.... A bogus ideology that hardly anyone really believes in, but everyone has to parrot unless they want to be labeled dissidents—sorry, I mean deplorables? Check. A population that no longer regards patriotism, religion, having children, or community involvement as important? Check. How about a massive disaster that lays bare the utter incompetence and mendacity that pervades every level of government? For Chernobyl, read Covid. And, while I make no claims to legal expertise, I think I recognize Soviet justice when I see—in a New York courtroom—the legal system being abused in the hope not just of imprisoning but also of discrediting the leader of the political opposition.... I still cling to the hope that we can avoid losing Cold War II...."

Writes Niall Ferguson, in "We’re All Soviets Now/A government with a permanent deficit and a bloated military. A bogus ideology pushed by elites. Poor health among ordinary people. Senescent leaders. Sound familiar?" (Free Press).

"The Biden campaign seems to believe that journalists should stop reporting on polls, rallies, and other tentpoles of traditional presidential races..."

"... and instead devote their resources to telling Americans that Trump wants to be a dictator, over and over again. If that means ignoring Biden’s missteps and weaknesses, well, the Biden campaign can accept that.... [V]ilifying the media has been a building block of Trump’s political identity.... Trump can win this race without favorable media coverage... Biden is in a different, arguably opposite position. His campaign argues that Democrats, unlike Republicans, are actually tethered to reality. Biden’s people are desperately trying to convince voters that the country is in much better shape than most Americans seem to believe. That elections are safe. That the economy, and unemployment, are not as bad as you’ve heard. Biden’s team needs voters to trust reputable publications that reliably print and publish facts—such as the [New York] Times and the [Wall Street] Journal. Then some campaign staffers and high-profile Democratic supporters turn around and attack these publications, in the process casting doubt on their reliability. It’s a losing proposition.... Biden’s belief in the Constitution means he supports a free and independent press. Authoritarians rise by lying and sowing mistrust...."

Writes John Hendrickson, in "The Biden Campaign’s Losing Battle/Beating up on the media is Trumpian and ineffective" (The Atlantic)(free link: here).

Hendrickson's unexamined belief in Biden's belief in the Constitution makes me want to reverse engineer that sentence I boldfaced: Biden's failure to support a free and independent press means he does not believe in the Constitution. 

I resist even examining why I have a strong mental barrier that stops me from reading this article.

Marrying an American citizen generally provides a pathway to U.S. citizenship. But people who crossed the southern border illegally..."

"... must return to their home countries to complete the process for a green card.That means long separations from their spouses and families. The new program would allow families to remain in the country while they pursue legal status. Officials briefed on the discussions said the announcement could amount to the most sweeping unilateral move by a president to provide relief to unauthorized immigrants since President Barack Obama implemented DACA. In a separate move on Tuesday, Mr. Biden is also expected to announce new ways to help people in DACA, known as Dreamers, gain access to work visas."

From "Biden to Give Legal Protections to Undocumented Spouses of U.S. Citizens/Undocumented spouses of American citizens will be shielded from deportation, provided work permits and given a pathway to citizenship, according to officials briefed on the plan" (NYT).

"The decision comes as Mr. Biden tries to strike a balance on one of the most dominant political issues in 2024. Aware that many Americans want tougher policies on the border, Mr. Biden just two weeks ago announced a crackdown that suspended longtime guarantees that give anyone who steps onto U.S. soil the right to seek asylum here. Almost immediately after he issued that order, White House officials began privately reassuring progressives that the president would also help undocumented immigrants who had been in the nation for years...."

"I now assume that any prosecution or regulatory attack on a business not overtly aligned with the Democrats is undertaken for partisan political reasons."

  A Glenn Reynolds rule of thumb.

"Corporate media has spent 8 years, in consensus, branding Trump a racist and White Nationalist."

"Meanwhile, actual Black voters are migrating away from Dems/Biden to Trump in what even CNN is describing as a historic shift (following Latino voters)."

Writes Glenn Greenwald, looking at this:

Corporate media has spent 8 years, in consensus, branding Trump a racist and White Nationalist.

Meanwhile, actual Black voters are migrating away from Dems/Biden to Trump in what even CNN is describing as a historic shift (following Latino voters):pic.twitter.com/QmBi29WRmp

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 17, 2024

Sunrise — 5:23, 5:25, 5:36, 5;36

That's me in the 4th picture, the one taken by Meade. 

"Calm down people, it is not raw/cold, it is a veggie burger patty underneath a slice of tofu."

Said Chuck Schumer [CORRECTION: No, just some random commenter], quoted in "Chuck Schumer deletes Father’s Day photo tweet in front of grill after critics slam his spatula skills" (NY Post).

Oh, Chuck! Stand up for yourself. 

Fungus of the Day.

Found near the tiny beach:

"[M]y notes weren’t always as illuminating as I’d expected them to be. 'What does ‘Alt’ mean?' I asked Hugh over dinner one night."

"He looked down at the page. 'It’s not "Alt,"' he said. 'It’s "A.L.T."' Then I remembered. We’d been out early that morning, observing a short parade of ostriches. It was misty, and I pointed to a vague shape on the horizon. 'What’s that?' I asked Dalton. He followed my finger and told me it was likely an A.L.T. 'Animal-looking thing,' he explained."

I'm so glad to see a new David Sedaris essay in The New Yorker, "Notes on a Last-Minute Safari/We saw every animal that was in 'The Lion King' and then some. They were just there, like ants at a picnic, except that they were elephants and giraffes and zebras."

I liked seeing the first syllable of my last name in a new context, but more important was the opportunity to find out David Sedaris's opinion of going on "safari," because I had quite recently asserted, to a complete stranger, that going on safari was really basically the same thing as going to the zoo. These things are packaged. It's not as though you're exploring the authentic natural habitat of elephants, giraffes, and zebras.

"These officials declare that it is now unprofessional or reckless for lawyers to draw historical comparisons to show trials or..."

"... to question the motives or ethics underlying these cases. They warn lawyers not to 'sow distrust in the public for the courts where it does not belong.' Yet, many believe that there is an alarming threat to our legal system and that distrust is warranted in light of prosecutions like the one [against Trump] in Manhattan. ... [C]ritics of political prosecutions under the Crown and during the Adams Administrations were often threatened with disbarment or other legal actions for questioning the integrity or motives of judges or prosecutors. It is not enough to say 'well that was then and this is now.' The point is that the bar association also has a duty to protect the core rights that define our legal system, particularly the right of free speech."

Writes Jonathan Turley, in "Think twice? Bar group tells members it’s OK to criticize, but don’t dare call Trump conviction 'partisan'/Connecticut Bar Association makes chilling claim that calling the case one of political prosecution has 'no place in the public discourse'" (Fox News).

"There is no seatbelt for parents to click, no helmet to snap in place, no assurance that trusted experts have investigated and ensured that these platforms are safe for our kids...."

"Parents aren’t the only ones yearning for solutions. Last fall, I gathered with students to talk about mental health and loneliness. As often happens in such gatherings, they raised the issue of social media.... 'I just don’t feel good when I use social media,' [a young woman named Tina] said softly.... Her confession opened the door for her classmates.... There was a sadness in their voices, as if they knew what was happening to them but felt powerless to change it.... Why is it that we have failed to respond to the harms of social media when they are no less urgent or widespread than those posed by unsafe cars, planes or food?... Students like Tina... do not want to be told that change takes time, that the issue is too complicated or that the status quo is too hard to alter.... Now is the time to summon the will to act...."

Writes Vivek H. Murthy, the Surgeon General, in "For Our Kids’ Safety, Social Media Platforms Need a Health Warning" (NYT).

WARNING — THE QUESTION THAT FOLLOWS MAY AFFECT YOUR BRAIN. How dare the government slap its message on the writing and photography of its free citizens?

Let's have a congressional hearing...

"The design brief provides... that the background of the flag must be colored 'buff'... and the flag should be 'so simple that a child can draw it from memory.'"

"It must also have a pine tree in the center and a blue five-pointed North Star in the upper corner, the brief said.... The contest rules specify that the design has to be an original work and not generated by artificial intelligence. The contest winner will not be compensated and the design can be modified by the secretary of state...."

I'm reading "Maine Accepting Designs for a New State Flag/Maine is seeking design ideas before voters in November determine whether to adopt a new, more distinctive flag" (NYT).

Maine is one of the many states with a flag based on the state seal. These flags are way too cluttered, the polar opposite of something a child could draw from memory. Central to Maine's flag, however, is a pine tree, and the contest requires continued focus on the pine tree. There's also a well-placed desire to return to something like Maine's 1901 flag, which is seal-free and seems to adhere to good principles of flag design:

 

But a pine tree at this screwy moment makes us think of trumped-up controversy surrounding Samuel Alito's wife:

"It was technically illegal, of course, but everyone was benefiting.... By the end of the ’70s, however, loft living had become quite fashionable..."

"... and some landlords were looking to cash in, pushing out the artists for a wealthier clientele. The artists pushed back, and in 1982 state lawmakers enacted Article 7-C of the New York Multiple Dwelling Law, which is commonly known as the 1982 Loft Law. This legislation gave protection and rent stabilization to people who had been living in these spaces. It also required landlords to bring the units up to residential code. When the law was enacted... there were tens of thousands of artists living in lofts across the city. Now just a few hundred remain...."

From "A look inside New York’s historic artist lofts, the last of their kind" (CNN). Nice pictures of present-day artists lofts.

Sunrise — 5:03, 5:17, 5:34, 5:47.

Fungus of the Day.

"Oh. Backordered? Estimated to ship August 13th...."

A TikTok moment.

Over at The New York Times, it looks as though Trump has already won the election.

At the top of the front page:

 

A quick look at the 4 articles:

1. "The Resistance to a New Trump Administration Has Already Started/An emerging coalition that views Donald J. Trump’s agenda as a threat to democracy is laying the groundwork to push back if he wins in November, taking extraordinary pre-emptive actions." It's almost as though there's a conspiracy to deny the election.

"Polls suggest that several of Mr. Biden’s core constituencies — young people, Black people and Hispanics — are increasingly Trump-curious."

"In a Wall Street Journal poll of swing states, 30 percent of Black men said they would definitely or probably vote for Mr. Trump. For the disaffected, Mr. Trump offers the promise of radical change. In [a recent New York Times-Siena College survey], these 'tear-it-down' voters — some 15 percent of registered voters — prefer Mr. Trump by 32 percentage points.... 'The polling data has been wrong all along,' [President Biden] said in an interview.... Rejecting the polls — relying instead on anecdotes, instincts and vibes — is political malpractice.... ... Mr. Biden should assume [the polls] are right — and act accordingly."

From "Biden should assume the polls are right, not wrong" by the Editorial Board of The Washington Post.

Exactly how does one "act accordingly"? Just because Biden says the polls are wrong doesn't mean he believes they are wrong. One way to act as if the polls are right is to assert that they are wrong.

Speaking of Trump appealing to black people, here's "Trump portrays rampant crime in speech at Black church in Detroit /The presumptive Republican nominee, who hopes to dent Biden’s advantage among Black voters, has often disparaged communities where many African Americans live" (WaPo)(free access link):

"Stanford’s top disinformation research group collapses under pressure/The Stanford Internet Observatory provided real-time analysis..."

"... on viral election falsehoods but has struggled amid attacks from conservative politicians and activists." 

That's the headline at WaPo, and I'm wondering how the 2 parts of the headline relate to each other. Why did the Stanford Internet Observatory collapse? Was it because conservatives attacked it? How much of a struggle is it for a research group that specializes in monitoring disinformation to handle attacks? The word "amid" fudges the causal connection. Did X happen because of Y or did X and Y just happen around the same time?

The word "amid" also appears in the first sentence: "The Stanford Internet Observatory... has shed most of its staff and may shut down amid political and legal attacks that have cast a pall on efforts to study online misinformation."

"Amid" appears again in the 4th paragraph: "Students and scholars affiliated with the program say they have been worn down by online attacks and harassment amid the heated political climate for misinformation research, as legislators threaten to cut federal funding to universities studying propaganda."

Have I ever gone on "amid" alert before? Yes! In October 2013, there was a NYT headline, "Obama’s Uncertain Path Amid Syria Bloodshed." 

Sunrise — 4:56, 4:58, 4:59, 5:20.

"China is the prime AI threat... and... what they need more than anything else is electricity."

"They have to have electricity, massive amounts of electricity.... [T]he electricity needs are greater than anything we've ever needed before to do AI at the highest level, and China will produce it because they'll do whatever you have to do, whereas we have environmental impact people.... We have a lot of people trying to hold us back, but massive amounts of electricity are needed in order to do AI, and we're going to have to generate a whole different level of energy. And we can do it, and I think we should do it, but we have to be very careful with it right we have to watch it.... A lot of smart people... say it takes over it takes over the human race. It's really powerful stuff, AI, so let's see how it all works out...."

"Joe and that other guy are essentially the same age. Let’s not be fooled. But what this election is about..."

"... it’s about the character of the person leading our country. Joe Biden is a healthy, wise 81-year-old ready and willing to work for you every day to make our future better. Joe isn’t one of the most effective presidents of our lives in spite of his age, but because of it."

Said Jill Biden, in Green Bay, Wisconsin, quoted in "Jill Biden pitches the benefits of age on the campaign trail" (CNN).

"The woman I am today is wiser, stronger, more insightful and more confident than I was all those years ago. Every line on my face has been earned by the furrowed brows of difficult decisions made. By the sun of countless roads traveled, by the sweet strain of deep laughter with the people I love. Age is a gift.”"

That made me want to ask ChatGPT, "Write a short speech about why it's good for a candidate to be quite elderly." Here's the answer I got, written out, in less than 5 seconds:

"In a chapter entitled 'He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not,' Dr. Fauci described how Mr. Trump repeatedly told him he 'loved' him while at the same time..."

"... excoriating him with tirades flecked with four-letter words. 'The president was irate, saying that I could not keep doing this to him,' Dr. Fauci wrote. 'He said he loved me, but the country was in trouble, and I was making it worse. He added that the stock market went up only 600 points in response to the positive Phase 1 vaccine news, and it should have gone up 1,000 points, and so I cost the country "one trillion dollars."' (The president added an expletive.)..."

From "Fauci Speaks His Mind on Trump’s Rages and Their ‘Complicated’ Relationship/In a new book, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci recounts a career advising seven presidents. The chapter about Donald J. Trump is titled 'He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not'" (NYT).

Yesterday, I blogged about an Axios article that said neither Biden nor Trump were doing much to prepare for the debate.

And I said I doubted that the debate would take place. I took a little poll and 60% of you agreed with me that Biden would back out.

This morning, I'm reading "Trump, Biden and CNN Prepare for a Hostile Debate (With Muted Mics)/With Donald Trump’s rampage at the first 2020 debate still fresh in the memories of both campaigns and the moderators, the candidates are preparing in sharply different ways" (NYT).

[B]oth campaigns are racing to prepare....

Okay, that's not what I heard yesterday.

"It’s rare to find anyone these days who actually wants to get to early retirement by living off beans..."

"... those people, with their stringent penny-pinching, are largely known in the community as LeanFIRE. A lot more people aim for CoastFIRE (a more measured approach that involves front-loading your retirement savings and 'coasting' on compound interest and working lightly until you’re ready to quit) or BaristaFIRE (quitting your job but buttressing your retirement with a side gig, such as that of a part-time barista, to receive health-insurance benefits) or FatFIRE (a luxurious, no-sacrifice approach to retirement, the polar opposite of LeanFIRE — and the subset to which Wong belongs). You might be tempted to regard early retirees as layabouts, soaking up sunshine while everyone else toils. But why not see them as brave maniacs, daring to build an entirely new vision of the world?"

Writes Amy X. Wang, in "Your Neighbors Are Retiring in Their 30s. Why Can’t You? Meet the schemers and savers obsessed with ending their careers as early as possible" (NYT)(free access link).

FIRE = Financial Independence Retire Early

I'm glad this article mentions the 1992 book "Your Money or Your Life" (commission earned). Here's a WaPo article from a couple years ago, "Why this 1992 personal finance book still has a cult following" (free access link).

The NYT article was the subject of yesterday's episode of The Daily Podcast, and it's an excellent listen, with things that are not in the article. I was drawn in by this part, going into the psychology of one of the "FatFIRE" retirees, Alan Wong, who looked at the question "who am I without work?" 

Sunrise — 4:52, 5:18, 5:20, 5:23, 5:23:38.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

That last photograph is by Meade (and of me).

"But with Democrats, even when they talk about the good things they've done, it sounds fake. And I know that they're capable of sounding real."

I was watching the old HBO series "John Adams" — Episode 1, "Join or Die" — and I was amazed to see this shot.

It's that terrible flag! Today's Flag Day — and Donald Trump's birthday — so I thought I'd show you the photograph I was inspired to take.

The Biden campaign is a disaster and this is what The New York Times dredges up?

I'm reading "A Hollywood Heavyweight Is Biden’s Secret Weapon Against Trump/The longtime movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg always sought scary villains for his films. Now he has found what he considers a real-life one in Donald J. Trump."

Trim and wiry, intense but amiable, Mr. Katzenberg at age 73 still exudes a kind of ambitious, animal energy as if he were one of his movie protagonists. He is famous around Hollywood, and now Washington, for rising at 5 a.m. and riding an exercise bicycle for 90 minutes while simultaneously reading four newspapers before taking as many as three breakfast meetings — and waffles or eggs-and-extra-crispy-bacon breakfasts, not the leafy California kind. “The guy eats like a horse and he doesn’t gain any weight,” his close friend Casey Wasserman, the sports, music and entertainment mogul, groused good-naturedly.

Are Biden supporters in such deep delusion that they would take comfort from this "secret weapon"? This inane filler says: Time to panic! 

Katzenberg once ran Disney, so...

"Jeremy was competitive while young and felt immense pressure to demonstrate gifted achievement every day."

"'I could only work in fear. Only the fear of failure made me work in the end,' he said. As a young adult, he was paralyzed by the number of life options in front of him. He went into medicine and spent about 13 years as a medical student and doctor but eventually was hit by depression so severe, he couldn’t function. He wound up as a musician — not celebrated but enjoying himself and paying the bills...."

Writes David Brooks, in "What Happens to Gifted Children" (NYT).

Neither Biden nor Trump is doing much to prepare for the debate. Why is that?

I'm reading "Biden — and Trump — in no rush to prep for debate" (Axios).

Joe Biden, busy being president, is leaving most of the prep sessions for his big debate against Donald Trump to the last minute. Trump's team says the ex-president doesn't need much practice.... The message from Trump's campaign: Debate rehearsals are beneath us. We have nothing to worry about....

Both men have done plenty of debates in the past, including with each other, and they're unlikely to change their style. They could bone up on likely questions — on the substance — but what's the point? Both men will finesse or bungle their way through. I expect Biden to have some prepared one-liners, but there's no value to pre-memorizing that stuff. 

House Committee on the Judiciary — Hearing on the Manhattan District Attorneys Office.

Here's the whole thing:

SCOTUSblog is live-blogging the announcement of new opinions, expected imminently.

Here.

UPDATE: "We have the third and final ruling of the day, in Garland v. Cargill, the bumpstock case. It is by Justice Thomas, and the vote is 6-3. Sotomayor dissents, joined by Kagan and Jackson.... The question in this case is whether a bumpstock (an accessory for a semi-automatic rifle that allows the shooter to rapidly reengage the trigger to fire very quickly) converts the rifle into a machinegun. The court holds that it does not."

The second case was Campos-Chaves v. Garland. 5-4. "The court holds that the non-citizens in this case received adequate notice of the removal hearings that they missed and at which they were ordered removed, so that they can't seek rescission of their removal orders (issued in their absence) on the basis of defective notice.

The first case was US Trustee v. John Q Hammons. "The court held that the a statute violated the Bankruptcy Code because it allowed different fees for Ch 11 debtors depending on where they filed their cases. The remedy, the court holds today, is parity going forward, rather than a refund for past fees. This is a victory for the government."

Young sandhill cranes at sunrise on the UW Marching Band practice field.

Why they choose to spend the night on the artificial turf, I don't know. But as the sun rouses them, they're moved to preen:

They get moving, onto the real grass, where breakfast awaits:

They cross the yard lines that mean nothing to them... or perhaps the lines do mean something to them. As I said, I am not privy to the thoughts of cranes. Nor was Meade, who took these photos and who, somehow, inspired the young crane to come over, just for a moment:

Biden is lost.

Anyone who denies this is extremely uncomfortable and embarrassing to watch at this point isn't being honest.

And I don't understand how Democrats and their pundits believe they can convince Americans it's not happening.

And he wants 4 more years:pic.twitter.com/j1jrzc34u8

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 13, 2024

ADDED: If you think more context would help, take a look at this:

Everyone freaking out about that Biden clip at G7.

I found the full video. The longer clip, in context, is even more horrifying. pic.twitter.com/obFINP7RNE

— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) June 13, 2024

A Flag Day post, by Meade, on X.

pic.twitter.com/48qE4mMdnO

— Laurence Meade (@laurmeade) June 14, 2024

That photo was not taken today, but on January 13, 2024.

"We could probably go outside right now here in California — or really, wherever you are at in North America — and we could easily find a new species of mushroom or fungus that hasn’t been described."

Said the mycologist Mandie Quark, quoted in "The Mushroom Hunters Can’t Stop Finding Mysterious Fungi/For years, mycologists and hobbyists alike have been using DNA sequencing on foraged fungi" (NYT)(free access link).

Recent years have brought an explosion in sequencing, Ms. Quark said. More than 21,000 samples have already been sequenced this year, she said, up from 5,600 in 2022. “We will probably end the year with over 40,000,” she said.... Some of these organisms, living as a network of threads hidden in the soil, may not have sent up a fruiting body in years. But after a drenching rain in Southern California, collectors might encounter mushrooms that have not been seen for decades, Ms. Quark said....

"The official website of the Biden for President campaign is a complete mystery. It’s basically a half-hearted request for money with a promise to 'Finish the Job.'"

"Finish the job?? Does this make much sense when voters think the job you’ve been doing is so bad?... Of course, 'Bidenomics,' which famously crashed and burned as a campaign theme, was no better and probably worse. But what is 'finish the job' but Bidenomics without the name or mentioning Biden at all?"

Writes Ruy Teixeira, in "Democrats Should Swap Out 'Bidenomics' for an Abundance Agenda
'Finish the Job' ain’t gonna cut it."

Okay, so "Bidenomics"... "Finish the job"... how about "I'm not done yet" or "Can I get a time extension"?

Teixeira suggests: an “abundance agenda.” 

"The 45th president indicated that he’s likely to stick with his plan to announce his VP choice at next month’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee."

"'I think it’s – probably I’ll do it the way it’s usually done,' Trump said. 'You announce it at the convention.' The convention runs from July 15 to 18...."

From "Trump hints he has settled on his VP pick: ‘Sort of a pretty good idea'" (NY Post).

Is Trump on Ozempic?

Trump likes to talk about what drugs Biden might be using to get into State-of-the-Union condition for the upcoming debate, but what drug is Trump using? A TikTok video:

"Influencers have been given exclusive tours of the White House.... They’ve been wined and dined at lavish parties in New York and at State of the Union watch parties..."

"... in the White House. And they’ve been promised extraordinary access to party officials at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, where for the first time ever they’ll be given a special room of their own, outfitted with quiet spaces for making videos. At least one has been offered an interview with the president at the convention, but said he was asked not to bring up Gaza. Priorities USA, a super PAC supporting Mr. Biden’s campaign, has pledged to spend at least $1 million on influencers, some of whom will be paid to share talking points online...."

From "Don’t Forget to Like, Subscribe and Vote: Biden’s Rocky Influencer Courtship/The Biden campaign is trying to work its way into social media feeds. But the young, left-leaning voices that control the conversation aren’t making it easy" (NYT).

At the Thursday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

(Photo by Meade.)

"Supreme Court Upholds Broad Access to Abortion Pill/The justices unanimously rejected a bid to sharply curtail access to a widely available abortion pill, finding that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue."

The NYT reports.

I made that a free-access link.

In a unanimous decision, written by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, the court held that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the F.D.A.’s actions....

When the court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, it indicated that it was getting out of the abortion business, leaving the issue to the elected branches. The abortion pill decision vindicated that promise, at least for now....

When the case was argued, Justice Alito said he was troubled that it seemed no one had standing to challenge the F.D.A.’s action. Justice Kavanaugh wrote that not every dispute was for judges to decide: “Some issues may be left to the political and democratic processes.”

The classic Trump monologue about sharks and batteries.

Maybe you're noticing "Let’s Talk About Trump’s Gibberish/What the former president’s shark tirade says about American politics and media" and "Trump Rants About Sharks, and Everyone Just Pretends It’s Normal/Par for the course. Trump is Trump. But imagine the response if Joe Biden had said it." Both at The Atlantic. 

And then there was "Cognitive Decline? Trump Short-Circuits During Bonkers Rant/The former president glitched during a tirade about sharks and batteries" at The New Republic.

Is anyone "pretending" that's "normal"? No, I think people who like Trump feel as though they're listening to a stand-up comic. A highly gifted one, not a normal one. It's not "par for the course." It's a birdie. An eagle.

Trump's sharks-and-batteries monologue is a classic. Here... use it in your next audition:

"He writes graphically of his own deflowering; how he passes on the favor to his friend Carrie Fisher; of the almost-hand job he gets..."

"... in the back seat from someone’s wife when hitchhiking, as everyone used to do before the Manson murders; how Tennessee Williams grabs his testicles when he’s waiting tables at a dinner party — for better and worse, people always seem to be making a run at Griffin’s crotch — and Martin Scorsese’s wrath when he violates an order of celibacy during the filming of 'After Hours' (1985).... Much of [this memoir] is a privileged young man’s search for a place in the showbiz court to which he was born.... dropping Timothy Leary’s finest acid. Sean Connery, then playing James Bond, saved him from drowning! Bob Denver from 'Gilligan’s Island' had a temper!"

Writes Alexandra Jacobs, in "Growing Up With Joan Didion and Dominick Dunne, in the Land of Make-Believe/In his memoir 'The Friday Afternoon Club,' the Hollywood hyphenate Griffin Dunne, best known for his role in Martin Scorsese’s 'After Hours,' recounts his privileged upbringing" (NYT).

Here's the book, "The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir" (commission earned).

"For those of us who love to travel, the question of whether to revisit a place you’ve been to before is a repeated conundrum...."

"You’ve changed and the place has changed. You’re visiting not simply a place, but a place captured in a moment in time — one that exists for you in the past and to a past version of yourself.... Every traveler has been told on one journey or another, 'You should have been here 30 years ago.' You missed Angkor Wat when it was largely abandoned. Beijing when the sky was still blue. Iceland before Instagram. It can seem like you’ve always arrived too late...."

Writes Pamela Paul, in "The Joys and Perils of Return Travel" (NYT).

I would think that any place that turns out to have been worth traveling to once is better seen on the second visit. This principle applies to many other things, such as seeing a movie, reading a book, eating a food, and — most obviously — meeting a person. If your reaction to a first encounter is once is enough, then, in retrospect, you're seeing that it didn't really meet the better-than-nothing standard.

"There was one really good thing about 'Hillbilly Elegy,' meaning the response to it: People were actually genuinely trying to understand something about a part of the country they didn’t understand."

"But there was something that wasn’t so good, which is that people were looking for some interpretive lens for Trump’s voters that never really asked them to challenge their priors or to rethink what they felt about those people. And I realized that I was being used as this whisperer of a phenomenon that some people really did want to understand, but some people didn’t. And the more that I felt like, not an explainer and a defender, but part of what I thought was wrong about the liberal establishment, the more that I felt this need to go very strongly away from it...."

Said J.D. Vance in an interview with Ross Douthat, "What J.D. Vance Believes" (NYT). This is a long interview, and that is a free-access link.

ADDED: This interview made me want to go back and read the reviews of "Hillbilly Elegy," which became a best-seller in the summer of 2016, before the shock of Donald Trump actually winning the election. I bought the book then myself, and I had the sense that it was written for liberals... who were pretty much exactly like what Vance describes in his new interview. 

"For more than 20 years, South Korea has prohibited food or food scraps from going into trash bins."

"Instead, food waste is used to create compost, animal feed or biogas. France has a mandatory composting law, which means municipalities must provide residents ways to divert organic waste from landfills. In 2016, France became the first country to require supermarkets to donate still-safe food. California is furthest along. Since 2022, the state has required grocery stores to donate, not throw away, 'the maximum amount of edible food that would otherwise be disposed,' or face fines. This year large restaurants, hotels and hospital cafeterias also came under the law. The legislation also requires every city and county to reduce the volume of organic waste that goes into landfills by 75 percent by 2025, compared with 2014 levels. That means building more composting facilities or putting in machines that create biogas from organic waste...."

From "White House Announces Strategy to Keep Edible Food Out of Landfills/The government will look at ways to extend the shelf life of foods and to create more composting and other facilities, as well as urge companies to donate more food" (NYT).

Sunrise — 5:15, 5:20, 5:20:18.

"The president declared flatly last week that he would not pardon his son if convicted, but did not address a commutation..."

"... which would leave the guilty verdict intact but wipe out some or all of the punishment. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Wednesday that she could not say whether the president might consider such an action. 'He was very clear, very upfront, obviously very definitive' in ruling out a pardon.... But as for a commutation, she added, 'I just don’t have anything beyond that.' Ms. Jean-Pierre said she had not spoken with the president about the matter yet and so her careful response may only reflect not wanting to go beyond her talking points, not an effort to leave the option open...."

The NYT reports.

Goodbye to Françoise Hardy.

From the WaPo obituary: "Françoise Hardy, a French singer-songwriter whose melancholy voice, doe-eyed beauty and trendsetting sense of style made her an international sensation in her teens, captivating fashion designers and beguiling musicians such as Bob Dylan and David Bowie, has died at 80."

The Biden campaign throws a random celebrity at me.

That's just sad. The email goes on to ask me to "join" Carole King by giving money to "Joe and Kamala."

What celebrity are they throwing at you? At least I know they're not using Spotify to try to find out which musical artist might be able to reach me. The answer is no one, but I don't think I've ever played one of Carole King's recordings. I've been subjected to them on a number of occasions. I don't dislike her. I just don't care. And even if I did care about her — or anyone else's — music, I wouldn't care about her name slapped on some political email... other than to find it insulting that the campaign thinks I might be stirred to action by a celebrity's name.

Carole King. I mean, it's annoying. It's like some idiot was wondering how to call out to Boomers.

"Something is wrecking Joe Biden, but it isn’t the economy—at least the economy that economists know how to measure—and it isn’t inflation...."

Writes Zacahry D. Carter, in "Inflation Is Not Destroying Joe Biden/But something is!"

Why did the crow cross the road?

(Video by Meade.)

"Joe Biden desperately needs some wins — real, not cosmetic, ones. Who in his administration is thinking about how to get him some?"

"The Gaza cease-fire isn’t it. It merely punts a problem that needs to be solved.... Ukraine could be another win for Biden, an easier one.... Why does Ukraine always need to come to the verge of defeat before the president finally relents and gives it the weapons it needs?... But the biggest win Biden will need will be domestic. It won’t be his executive order all but banning asylum for migrants: That only confirmed that he had failed to use every option at his disposal to tackle the crisis. It won’t be low unemployment: No magic wand will erase 2022’s inflation or today’s high interest rates. It won’t be Trump’s legal travails, which seem to have galvanized his supporters.... And it won’t be finding a way to offload Kamala Harris from the ticket.... It all leaves the president with one option that can be a win for America and, ultimately, his place in history. He can still choose not to run, to cede the field to a Democrat who can win.... There’s still time, if only just. It would be a courageous, honorable and transformative legacy."

Writes Bret Stephens, in "The Most Courageous Thing That Joe Biden Can Do" (NYT).

"Later on, Madonna would admit to sharing a lot with the character of Susan. Both used their powers of persuasion..."

"... to get friends and lovers to do what they wanted. Both were charming con artists that didn’t let you know you were being conned. There was an art to seduction, and Madonna had mastered it. She was a flirt who made everyone she flirted with feel a little bit sexier. Men and women. That was her gift."

Writes Susan Seidelman, in "'Directors Don’t Cry!'/Madonna, Rosanna Arquette, and the Wild Birth of Desperately Seeking Susan/In an excerpt from her memoir, Susan Seidelman watches Madonna go from newcomer ('I’ll do anything to get this part') to icon" (Vanity Fair).

Sunrise — 5:05, 5:14, 5:19.